Project description
As young girls, both Rita Kimani and Peris Bosire witnessed the frustration their families and communities faced in agriculture. Despite toiling away for months on end, their harvests were meager. They did not have the capital to purchase the critical farming inputs that could increase their yields and revenues. On their first day as students at the University of Nairobi, Rita and Peris crossed paths and became instant friends. Throughout university they honed their computer science skills together in competitions and internships at top technology firms. In their final year, they resolved to use their personal and academic experiences to bridge the gap between smallholder farmers and financial institutions and so they founded FarmDrive. To bridge this gap, FarmDrive has built a solution that provides detailed risk profiles of smallholder farmers to financial institutions. FarmDrive does this through a credit score, generated by an algorithm developed by the team. The algorithm relies on data-sets collected from the farmers through their mobile phones, alternative data and machine learning.
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Project summary
- Organization FarmDrive
- Location Kenya
- Creation date 09/05/2019
- Project category Smart-economy
